Wildcards and truncation symbols can be used to expand or focus searches. The system retrieves up to 300 matches when using wildcards or truncation.
Please note, phrasal searching (putting quotation marks around two or more words) is incompatible with wildcards or truncation. Users will need to use one or the other. The 3 symbols that can be used are as follows:
| Name |
Symbol |
Function |
Usage |
Example |
| Number Sign |
# |
Wildcard |
- At least 3 characters must precede symbol
- Symbol replaces one character in search
|
Wom#n retrieves woman and women |
| Question Mark |
? |
Wildcard |
- At least 3 characters must precede symbol
- Symbol replaces 0 to 9 characters in search term
- Following the question mark with a number specifies the number of unknown characters.
|
Encyclop?dia retrieves encyclopedia and encyclopaedia
Res?4tion retrieves respiration, restoration, reservation etc.
|
| Asterisk |
* |
Truncation |
- At least 3 characters must precede the symbol
- Adding this symbol to the end of a word retrieves variant endings
-This works and will return records with 0 or more characters in place of the symbol
|
Connect* retrieves connect, connection, connectivity etc. |
